


Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Hamilton

by josiepug



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Historical Accuracy, I'm probably forgetting stuff, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-17 21:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5885341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josiepug/pseuds/josiepug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Hamilton is non-stop, and everyone else is just trying to keep up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John

**Author's Note:**

> This story, with one exception, is told from a different pov every chapter. The order is mostly chronological and as historically accurate as I could make it without driving myself insane.

People thought that he was reckless. That he rushed into battle too eagerly, that he spoke his opinions too loudly and too freely. Lafayette never missed a chance to taunt him for his behaviour, his eyes betraying more serious concern than his words suggested. Even General Washington noticed John’s penchant for danger. After Brandywine, the General had pulled him aside to tell him to be more careful.

None of them saw the truth. 

John Laurens was a coward.

He was a coward every time he picked up his pen to set down a letter to Alexander. He was a coward every time his dearest friend’s hand drifted onto his knee and he shifted away. He was a coward when Alexander kissed a girl in front of him and he smiled indulgently. Why did he smile? It burned him.

Alexander was the truly reckless one, and he made the flaw beautiful. He fought with as much zeal as John did, perhaps more. John hadn’t been there when he had stolen cannons in New York, but Mulligan told him that he had run straight through enemy fire, that Mulligan had yelled himself hoarse afterwards, laying into Alexander about what an idiot he was. At first that story had made John smile, but now it too hurt, like everything else.

Most people called Alexander brave, not reckless. He had a way of doing that, of making his way seem reasonable, natural even, when in actuality it was beyond insane. It was the same trait that let him get away with his antics at camp. How he could smile more broadly than anyone else, how he could lay his hand on John’s knee and stare into his eyes and tell John that he belonged to him forever while everyone else looked on and laughed good-naturedly. Like that was a normal thing to do, like they were just two soldiers, two friends.

Alexander kissed him behind a tent one night. When their lips first met, John had been shocked, his heart racing, thumping to the wrongness and the fear. But Alexander’s lips were persuasive in every way, of course they were, and as long as they touched his, kissing Alexander Hamilton was the only thing John had ever wanted to do.

Then Alexander pulled away and he was grinning and John could swear he could see his beautiful eyes glinting despite the dark and he remembered the million things that were wrong about their situation and he ran.

He was a coward.

It was not the last time they kissed. When they next parted, Alexander wrote him letters that were far too effusive, and John wrote back far too distantly. On the battlefield, men said John had grown even more daring, that his dreams of a black battalion had become more feverish, more absurd. Even then, he knew he was compensating for something.

Alexander wrote to him about his frustrations with Washington, about his desire for command. He thought he had something to prove. John knew he was wrong. Alexander Hamilton was the bravest man he had ever met, and even as John’s reputation for courage grew, he knew that he would never catch up to him.

***

When Alexander told him that he had gotten married, John cried. He couldn’t help it. He sat in his tent alone in the South Carolina heat, clutching the letter and sobbing. It was ridiculous. He could never have expected to keep Alexander forever. The million reasons from before came flooding back. He knew them all intimately. And he also knew that none of them were why Alexander had gotten married. He had gotten married because he had fallen in love, because Alexander Hamilton lived for rushing into battle and dreaming up a glorious new nation and falling desperately in love. He was a man who took what he wanted whenever he was given half a chance, and Alexander wanted so much.

Despite everything, John couldn’t bring himself to begrudge him that, so he cried. And then wrote back a congratulatory note.

After he managed to craft a letter that was not blotted with tears (it only took four tries), he sat at his desk, staring at the wall. He thought distantly that he should be drinking whisky, drowning his pain. But this was war and there wasn’t enough to go around and John couldn’t seem to muster the energy to do anything but stare at the walls of his tent. Stare and think. There had been a time when John had wished himself braver, brave enough to catch hold of Alexander and keep him, to pull him in tight and protect from the world at which he threw himself. But how could he have done that when he couldn’t keep himself still? When he was always running off, petitioning for his precious black battalion, pushing himself to the front lines? He crossed paths and sometimes lips with Alexander, but he could never stay, never hold on. He was the wrong person, in so many ways, for Alexander Hamilton. 

It didn’t make it hurt any less. 

He wondered if Alexander’s wife would be able to do what he couldn’t, and he hoped that it was jealousy that made him think not.

God, he really wished he had some whisky.

***

At Yorktown, he followed Alexander into battle, and a part of him felt like this was how it had always been, him running two steps behind Alexander, their actions perfectly synchronised. In the midst of whizzing bullets and desperate screams, he thought he wanted this to last forever.

It didn’t.

The war was over after that for Alexander, for most people. Not for John. There was so much that was still unfinished, huge segments of the population that had no freedom whatsoever. Alexander urged him to join Congress, to finish things that way, with a pen in hand. That’s what he was doing, and it was working. But Alexander made everything look easy. It was what John loved about him. What he hated about him. One of so many things.

Maybe it was recklessness that had him charging off to fight that day. Maybe it was some latent rebellion against Alexander, against moving on, against making the insane seem possible. Or maybe his motives were purer, a fight to win every last inch of land, to sacrifice. It was probably a bad sign that he wasn’t certain.

Either way, as he felt the life pump out of his neck, staining his weak hands as they clutched his throat, John thought of Alexander. Of his eyes, of his easy smile, inviting John to come after him, to take on the world. John’s vision was greying out, and he knew that this was the end. Alexander’s face, always clear in his mind’s eye, receded into the distance, unknowable, unobtainable.

As the darkness closed in with finality, a part of him welcomed the defeat.


	2. Eliza

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still not really happy with this one, but I'm sick of agonising over it, so there you go.

The first thing she noticed about Alexander was his eyes. She knew that this was not particularly unique. Many people loved Alexander’s eyes. Many people loved Alexander. She knew that and yet, when she looked into them, she felt like she must be seeing something special. The way he would stare at her, sharp and soft at the same time, like he was trying to capture every inch of her in his mind and hold her, protect her with his gaze alone. 

She could look into his eyes forever.

Before she had met her husband, Angelica had been the smartest person she’d known, but even she had nothing on Alexander. There were worlds being built behind those eyes all the time. There were palaces in his mind, pieces crumbling off and toppling out through his mouth, rebuilding in the air, so that everyone else got a taste of the wonders trapped within.

Eliza sensed that people outside their relationship assumed he was inattentive, that because his glorious mind was focused on so many things, there could not possibly be room enough for her. They underestimated him. Alexander’s intellect was as playful and varied as it was powerful. When he loved, he loved with so much energy it hurt. He would only have had to focus a fraction of it on her, and Eliza would have melted, but as in all his passions, he held nothing back. A single look could make her come undone, and Alexander did much more than look. It seemed to Eliza that the more he had to do, the more that was on his mind, the more intensely he focused on her, cherished her. His love was so intense that it was a long time before she learned to pick out the other passions glinting from those eyes.

Phillip had just been born when she first really saw something in them that she could never reach. Eliza had been downstairs in the kitchen, cleaning up after supper, when she came up to find Alexander holding Phillip and singing to him. She didn’t recognise the tune, and the words were too soft to understand, but it was beautiful. Alexander was a surprisingly good singer. Or perhaps not so surprising. He was good at so many things.

For a moment, Eliza just stood in the doorway, savouring the moment. Sensing her presence, Alexander looked up.

“He’s asleep,” he whispered, somewhat unnecessarily. Together they walked over to the cradle, where Alexander gently deposited their precious burden.

“I’m going to build him a nation,” Alexander said quietly, and coming from anyone else, the statement would have sounded horrifically arrogant. Perhaps it still was, but looking at her husband’s face, she knew he meant it with all his being. He would die for the chance to make a better world for their son. 

It was an admirable sentiment, but unsettling as well. His eyes were always feverish, always over-bright, but he usually did a good job of softening them for her. Tonight, they were burning in their intensity and it was just the slightest bit frightening.  
She wrapped her arms around his waist, smiling gently into his shoulder, pulling him back to her. “Let’s start by building him a family, shall we?”  
It took very little urging to steer Alexander into bed.

***

Alexander had a way of pulling people along, of catching them up in his enthusiasm. Sometimes quite literally, as he spun Eliza around their kitchen, grinning from ear to ear. Eliza didn’t quite understand why anyone would want to spend their life minding the unstable financial system of a precarious new nation, but both Angelica and her husband were so ecstatic that she knew it must be an amazing opportunity.

“What did I tell you, about building a nation?” He laughed, so full of joy about being put in charge of the Treasury. Eliza smiled back at him, watching his eyes fill with that burning, unfathomable emotion that was somewhere between ambition and pain. He would build his nation, whatever it took.

Alexander was gone more than she would have liked. She was not, however, so naive as to be surprised. Her husband’s dreams would always be far too large for their little house, and she could not begrudge him achieving them. Besides, he did his best to bring her in. To ask often about the children, to value her housework, even to let her ease his workload by having her transcribe documents late into the night. Graciously, he refrained from correcting the spelling errors she knew she made. She could hope for nothing more.

And yet.

She worried about him. About the times when his beautiful eyes would go distant. When he would stop, mid-conversation, and she could see his brain traveling down paths along which she could never follow him. There were worlds in his brain that she knew nothing about, could never even fathom. She knew they were dangerous, and that he had no one to help him navigate them.

Sometimes he didn’t sleep for days, writing without pause. Sometimes he didn’t even do it at home, but stayed at the office, leaving Eliza to worry. As the years passed, the gnawing fear grew that she wouldn’t be able to reach him when he truly needed it, that he moved too quickly for her and when everything fell apart, there would be nothing she could do. 

She started to settle for the little things, making certain that she enjoyed every moment they had together, every time he played piano and sang to her or grabbed her from behind and kissed her in the kitchen. Perhaps she was being paranoid. Maybe Alexander’s frenetic pace had rubbed off on her, imbued her with a sense of urgency she had never felt before, but she didn’t question it. Whatever plan God had for them would show itself in good time, and if Eliza couldn’t reach all of him, at least she had something. And life with Alexander, whatever their struggles and whatever her worries, would always be worth it.

***

That winter, Eliza managed to convince Alexander to take a short break from his work to celebrate Phillip’s birthday. They went upstate to her father’s home to relax for a few days with the children. Of course, Alexander’s hands remained ink-smudged, and he spent far more time at a desk than he did doing any sort of celebrating, but Eliza did not expect miracles. She should have known that Alexander would always be able to surprise her.

Eliza was in the kitchen, baking a succession of small pies for Phillip’s birthday when she sensed that something was afoot. Her husband was not working in the study, but seated on the floor with his son a full hour before she would normally have called him to supper. Many women would have welcomed this change in behaviour, but Eliza was suspicious. She watched Alexander and Phillip lean close to one another, whispering. She was probably just being paranoid. A few minutes later, she stepped out into the hall to call to her father and ask him about getting more flour when he next went into town. She heard a commotion coming from the kitchen behind her and turned only to see her husband and oldest son absconding out the back door with a piping hot pie each.

“Alexander!” She shouted, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice as she sprinted after them. She grabbed a coat and shoes with as much haste as she could, running out into the New York snow. Of course, her boys were not nearly as warmly dressed.

“Alexander, Phillip is going to catch cold and it will be your fault!” She had to admit, however, that their disregard for proper attire had given them a head start. Wasting no more breath, she went tearing after them.

Alexander should have been much faster than her, but he kept turning around to smirk, and it was slowing his progress. The snow, too, was quite deep, and Phillip was beginning to struggle. The third time Alexander had to reach down and pull him up, Eliza could see him make a decision.

“Give me the pie, Phillip, and escape while you still can!” Her husband shouted, pushing their son off to the right, where he disappeared into a copse of trees to escape his mother’s wrath. Alexander had sacrificed himself for the cause, and not a moment later, Eliza was tackling him to the ground, not even attempting to contain her laughter by this point. They rolled in the snow, gasping with mirth.

Alexander’s eyes were fairly glittering as he scooped up a handful of thoroughly squished pie and shoved it in his mouth.

“Alexander, as you very well know, those are too hot to eat.”

“Not anymore. That’s what the snow was for. My ingenious plan has been a success.” Eliza utterly lost it in the face of his jam-covered smile, writhing with laughter until she made some rather undignified snorting noises.

“You stole your son’s pie as well.” She finally choked out.

“I was saving it for you.” And then her face was full of perfectly cooled pie and she really should have seen that coming.

Trying to chew and catch her breath at the same time, Eliza rolled onto her back, partially squished by her husband’s weight, her heart rate finally slowing down, allowing her to take a second to bask in the moment. There were so many ways in which she would never catch up to Alexander, but she would take her small victories.

And it would be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, Angelica!


	3. Angelica

“Your sister is married to Alexander Hamilton? Who would have thought? I remember him from the war, always chasing after women.” The retired officer was rather drunk or he probably would have realised that he was implying that Angelica’s brother-in-law was bound to be unfaithful to her sister. The insinuation should maybe have bothered Angelica more than it did, but this man was a fool anyway.

Alexander had never chased after women. 

He had never had to. That was the terrible thing. Take herself, for example. Angelica wasn’t pursued by Alexander. She was married when they met, for God’s sake. All it took was one look from those intelligent eyes and she was the one doing the chasing. 

“Well, they are very happy now…” And she steered the conversation into safer waters. This man could have no idea of the wounds he was opening up. He was a drunk old fool who knew nothing about any of them. Besides, she was genuinely happy for Eliza and Alexander, and she wished nothing but the best for them.

Maybe more accurately, she wished that she was the best for them. That she wasn’t an ocean and a wedding ring away. That Eliza was a little more Roman than Saint. 

Her conversational partner prattled on about the Revolutionary War, about what was going on in France. He had nothing insightful to say, and she let her mind wander. Thomas Jefferson had been very proud of his modification to Locke’s words, his assertion that Americans should have a right to pursue happiness. Thomas was brilliant and visionary, but sometimes he was too black and white for his own good. He said that she had a right to pursue happiness. But if her happiness would have wrecked not one but two marriages, would have broken her sister’s heart and ruined her brother-in-law’s career, did she really have a right to it?

Angelica supposed that the declaration didn’t really say she had a right to achieve it, only to pursue. So she wrote letters to Alexander and to Eliza and she joked with them and allowed them to profess their love to each other and to her as if it weren’t horrifically obvious that their love, scribbled across an ocean, would never be enough. That even if she moved back to America, she would be too far away, the wrong diamond on her finger.

Of course, Alexander would probably laugh at her for taking anything that Thomas Jefferson had said seriously, even the founding words of their nation. She got letters from both of them, and though Thomas tried to be tactful about her brother-in-law, Alexander had no problem voicing his frustrations. It didn’t surprise Angelica that they were so emphatically opposed to one another. When she first met Thomas, he had reminded her of Alexander. They were both brilliant, both driven, both prone to using their linguistic gifts to flirt with anyone even remotely eligible. 

That train of thought brought her back to another conversation she had had in this very house, years before. How long ago it seemed. Then, it had not been a war-worn drunk in the seat across from her, but Thomas Jefferson himself, handsome and stylish with a veneer of polite reserve that Angelica could see right through. He had intelligent eyes, hungry.

*rewind*

“I trust that you and Monsieur Lafayette are working hard for France’s independence. It is a difficult situation, what with the significant financial troubles of that country coupled with the political factions grappling for power. It is a great thing you do in service of another nation. You must be very tired, though.” His eyes narrowed slightly when she spoke of France’s politics, but his smile was warm.

“My dear Mrs. Church, I may have been tired before this evening, but your very presence is a balm to my worries. But let us not talk of politics. It is my policy never to bore a lady with such masculine trivialities.”

No, he was not so like Alexander after all. Angelica could hardly imagine Alexander ever shrinking away from a political discussion, especially on account of her being a woman. He valued her opinion, although she was acutely aware that her Alexander would have talked politics to a tree if he thought it had ears. Perhaps this obvious disparity should have angered her, but she still found Thomas fascinating. Yes, it may have been their similarities that had first drawn Angelica to him, but it was their differences that kept her there. They talked for hours, a delicate game, Angelica testing how boldly she could air her opinions, Thomas doing his best to keep them to ‘polite’ conversation. Angelica was proud to say that he had limited success.

At the end of the night, Angelica found a note under her teacup that bore a scrawled address. When she arrived at the specified door, Thomas was waiting, a lazy smile on his face and a glass of French wine in his hand. He acted as if he had all the time in the world as he welcomed her inside, but when their lips met, his mouth was hungry and demanding, all reserve lost as he pushed her against what was certain to be a very precious and expensive painting.

Hands tangled in Thomas Jefferson’s hair, Angelica found herself wondering if this was what it would be like to kiss Alexander. Instantly, she hated herself for it. Why could she never be satisfied?

She left Thomas’ quarters before dawn despite the fact that her husband was away, and she didn’t much care what people thought anyway. For some reason, she didn’t want him to wake up to her in his bed.

Those sorts of nights became a bit of a past-time for her, but she always left before dawn. It took her years to divine the answer as to why. She liked Thomas. He was charming and smart with just the sort of clever mouth to make her very happy. Despite his sometimes cavalier attitude, he was quick and industrious and Angelica actually had to work to keep up with him. But when night came, he would always be waiting for her to take those last few steps to join him.

***

And it was sitting in that same chair, years later, carrying on an automatic conversation with a boring veteran that she realised that that was the reason.

Thomas had pushed her, had bounded ahead, had even invited her to come after him to America, but in the end, he always looked over his shoulder for her. He always expected her to follow.

Angelica supposed that many women would, did, find this flattering, but it wasn’t what she was looking for. 

Alexander never hesitated. He never looked back, never waited to see if she would come after him. That was the real difference. It was the difference that brought Thomas back to America without her, that gave ink to her pen as she wrote endless, hopeless letters to Alexander, wondering all the time what would have happened if she had gone with Thomas or somehow, insanely, seized Alexander for her own. If either of those roads would have let her capture happiness.

She would never know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, Maria Reynolds. And the angst gets angstier...


	4. Maria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Maria Reynolds. TW for mentions of domestic abuse.

James had said that Hamilton would be easy. He had people watching him for some time now, socialising with him at various events, feeling him out. James had said that Hamilton would be the perfect target: flirtatious and chivalrous with ungovernable passions. Maria should have had no trouble getting him exactly where she wanted him. She may be young and uneducated, but she was experienced in the matters of men. 

And that was why this situation was so frustrating.

It had started out easily enough. She had shown up at Hamilton’s door, distressed, pleading, her dress artfully ripped a little in the right places. His eyes had softened immediately, and Maria felt a spark of triumph. He suspected nothing and those eyes, they really were beautiful. He was attentive to her story, helpful, willing to give her money with almost no prodding. When she led him to her room, he went willingly enough, flirting with her all the way.

Things changed when she kissed him. He was flustered, suddenly trying to back out. Maria wondered if all his flirtations were an act, a cover. It was clear that he did not think of the true impact of his words, did not expect them to go any further than daring innuendo. She kissed him again, more persuasively, pushing her ample chest up against him, whispering assurances in his ear. It took significantly more work than she had expected to get him to take off his breeches, but eventually she managed it. She was very good, after all. She didn’t need an education to be a savvy and successful professional.

Still, the conquest lacked the satisfaction she had expected. Afterwards, Hamilton was flushed and apologetic, rushing off before she could get a word in edgewise. She cursed under her breath. She would have to tread carefully, make certain that he kept coming back or James would be angry. She shuddered slightly. She hated it when James got angry. Not everything she told Hamilton had been a lie. 

Weeks passed, and for awhile it got easier. Hamilton became more open to her advances, more likely to initiate his own. His wife was upstate, and her absence seemed to lessen the guilt in his eyes. And what eyes they were. Maria had found him attractive from the start. Nearly everyone did. But she had not expected to feel the way she did about him, to hope so anxiously for each meeting, to crave his company. In some ways, it made her life harder. James only seemed more uncouth, more abhorrent against the miracle that was Alexander Hamilton. 

When James bedded her, Maria began to close her eyes, imagining Hamilton’s face, his body. 

One night, she let slip his name. 

James bloodied her nose and blackened her eye before practically pushing her out the door to go to Hamilton. Predictably, he became enraged. She had to beg him not to go after James, and the words almost caught in her throat. Almost. She thought about telling him then that her husband knew about their affair, that he had arranged the whole thing, but that would involve admitting her own complicity in the matter. Hamilton would hate her for it. And despite the things that she and James were planning to do to him, some twisted part of her yearned after his respect, his love.

They didn’t have sex that day. James would not be happy about that, but Maria couldn’t make herself care. Hamilton held her while she cried, and for the first time in her life, she thought she understood what it meant to love. 

When he saw her to the door, she turned around, looking him full in those beautiful eyes. She felt braver than she ever had before, happy. “Thank you. You’ve saved me.” She expected him to smile. He loved to be a hero, with his dreams of a nation she could hardly understand and his gallant Roman pen names. But his face was pained and he didn’t respond until she was nearly out of earshot.

“And damned myself.” At that moment, Maria knew that he would never be hers. She would have cried if she had any tears left.

That very evening, James Reynolds wrote a note to Alexander Hamilton, and the games began.

She managed to convince Hamilton that she hadn’t known about the plot to extort him, but it was difficult. She was probably imagining things, but she didn’t think he looked at her quite the same way after that. She was working harder again, giving more, relaxing less. He still wanted her body, that much was obvious, but Maria fancied she saw something of loathing in his eyes when he looked at her. He was angrier, bitter. 

He never hurt her, and it should have made Maria glad, but it didn’t. She grew angry too, lashing out at him, turning him away for the slightest reason only to approach him later with fanatical love. His wife had come back, and she had to tread more carefully. She knew that James was having to threaten Hamilton more overtly to get the money, and her husband blamed her for not making it easier. She wrote Hamilton desperate, incoherent letters to bring him back to her, to keep James at bay, to drown in his eyes and never mind the muddle of guilt. It wasn’t like she was likely to do better.

She was convinced that Hamilton hated her. She didn’t understand why he kept coming back, started wondering if he was as afraid as she was to stop. But he was stronger than her in so many ways, and he did stop coming for awhile. James told her to write to him, to threaten to kill herself if he didn’t continue to see her, and she did. As she scribbled her desperate words, she wondered if she was acting.

Hamilton came back to her the next day, and that was all real.

It was going to fall apart eventually. She could feel it shattering for months, in slow motion. Holding Hamilton was like holding broken glass, and she couldn’t wait to be cut again. Meanwhile, he was growing more distant. Sometimes she thought he might be afraid of her, but then she decided it must be James he was afraid of. James was scary. She was Maria.

James arranged for Jacob Clingman to see Hamilton at their house, and Maria knew that the end was at hand. Her husband wanted too much, pushed too far, and Hamilton was already gone. He didn’t even break it off with her in person. Just one day, he stopped coming. He had probably exchanged words with James but Maria could never be certain.

For weeks, she tried to envision the last time they had been together, but for the life of her, she couldn’t recall. All she could remember was hot fear and cold anger and broken glass and black eyes. Hamilton never hit her, she tried to remind herself. 

It didn’t seem to matter.

She didn’t see him for months, and then, one day out of the blue, she was walking behind him on the street. He was with his wife, holding her hand, and for a brief moment she considered running up to the woman, grabbing her and shaking her. Screaming that her husband was a liar, that he was Maria’s, had been for nearly a year and that she could never keep him. He would tear her apart and run away with the pieces.

And then she thought she could never do it because she was back here and he was up ahead with his wife and they were holding hands and maybe some people could be happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The angst is strong with this one. Maria Reynolds is a really interesting person who was almost definitely mentally ill, and basically the entire affair (in both senses of the word) was really fucked up. Next up, Aaron Burr! A relationship arguably even stranger...


	5. Aaron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is still historically accurate, but not 100% chronological. Burr isn't necessarily remembering things completely in order, but there you go.

When Burr met Hamilton, he felt like he was miles ahead of the scrawny immigrant. He had already graduated college, and if he wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do next, he had some time. Hamilton, on the other hand, was under-educated, unpolished and seemed to have no concept of when to shut his mouth or concede a fight. Still, Burr got along well enough with him, comfortable enough to follow his own path while Hamilton blundered into God knew what sort of trouble.

For a while they were friends of a sort, even if they weren’t particularly friendly. Hamilton was brilliant. Burr had no trouble admitting it. And there was something magnetic about the man, something that pulled others into his mad, whirling world. Burr did his best to resist and was successful for the most part, but over the years, Hurricane Hamilton always seemed to have a way of coming back around to him.

At first, it seemed coincidental. It was all stupid things. They were the same height, nearly the same age. Burr learned that his father had ordained the minister who helped Hamilton get out of the hell hole he was born in. Not that Burr really knew anything about Hamilton’s past, but he never talked about his home, and Burr did know that Hamilton being unwilling to talk on a subject was a bad sign. 

There were other things too, though. More coincidences. Passing the Bar at the same time, setting up law offices right next to one another. Burr still told himself that it was just chance, that it meant nothing, but as the facts accumulated, he stopped believing it. He often wondered whether Hamilton felt the connection too, felt the thrum of their irregular and yet inevitable meetings, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you could ask, and Burr liked to give off the impression that he spared little thought for Hamilton anyway. 

There were days when he wondered if he was crazy, if they really didn’t meet that often. If Hamilton was completely oblivious to what Burr found himself obsessing over. After Theodosia died, he started to think he must be grasping at straws, yearning for some sort of connection, however tenuous or pathetic, to another person. Just his luck. Everyone he loved died. Hamilton remained.

It dawned on him that Hamilton was getting ahead of him. Any strange connection that Burr may or may not have been imagining did not seem to keep Hamilton from shooting past him, forging history in a headlong rush. For awhile, Burr thought it was because Washington was partial to Hamilton and had seemed to take an immediate dislike to Burr, but as he grew older, he knew that wasn’t the truth. 

There was just something about Hamilton.

Perhaps it was tenacity or drive or some other variation on ambition, but Burr didn’t think so. They were all ambitious, these revolutionaries, all brilliant. And yet Hamilton sped forth with super-human speed, never stopping to catch his breath or let the world catch up. It was worrying and frustrating and completely mesmerising.

Burr got his shots in, of course. He didn’t let Hamilton take total control of their law cases. He toned down his rhetoric, cut his superfluously soaring paragraphs. He was the better lawyer, and sometimes he even thought Hamilton knew it. Besides, they were on the same side. They sniped at each other, butted heads, but when they stood side by side in court, Burr knew they were unstoppable.

Like they were always meant to do this.

He did not allow this thought to linger for long. He may have been raised Calvinist, but his bizarre obsession with Hamilton was taking predestination a little far, even by his standards.

Over the years, they argued less, and grew further apart. Hamilton’s ideas were too bright to look at, and his zeal reminded Burr somewhat of the preachers who had known his grandfather. Hamilton would hate the comparison, but it was true. He saw the light.

Burr saw Hamilton, and he couldn’t look away.

He couldn’t stop watching, and yet Hamilton was always distant, living in the future, in a New York he had constructed from the ground up in his own mind. He couldn’t understand that Burr didn’t see his vision, that no one could really grasp his cynically idealistic dream of the future. It was intoxicating, though, the way he spoke about it, and many people signed on, Hamiltonians claiming to see things the way he did.

Burr knew that was impossible, to see as Hamilton did. He didn’t try, and it angered Hamilton.

Burr changed parties to get elected. Hamilton was not happy. Burr didn’t see why he cared that much. They didn’t really agree on many things. They just kept meeting.

And kept meeting. 

Burr arbitrated a duel between Monroe and Hamilton, stopped the man from getting himself killed over that stupid pamphlet. Couldn’t he see that that thing had done enough damage already?

Time trundled inexorably on, and Burr began to resent Hamilton. Hamilton started to hate him. And if that wasn’t the difference in their personalities, Burr didn’t know what was. Sometimes he thought Hamilton wanted him to reciprocate the hatred, but he did not, and it only irked his erstwhile friend further. Hamilton slandered Burr repeatedly in the press, needled him constantly, questioned his character.

As if that was a new thing. Like they hadn’t been questioning each other’s characters from the moment they had met. Neither of them found any answers.

Then Burr had a chance to become President, a real chance to make a real difference and cement his name in history. A shot at a position that Hamilton, at this point, could never achieve. And he would be good, he knew it. But of course it was Hamilton who stopped him, and he didn’t even bother feeling surprised. 

Finally, he was angry.

It was a good feeling. He understood why Hamilton was so partial to it. It felt like fire, like action. And Burr could make it last, was good at keeping it burning, enjoyed the distraction. His daughter, the only person he loved, had gotten married and moved away. He couldn’t help feeling that Alexander Hamilton was his only connection left. 

And whatever linked them burned white hot, drew taut with tension.

Burr had had a real chance to get ahead with his bid for the Presidency, but Hamilton, it seemed, could not let him go. The man had made countless rash mistakes, had imploded his own life, and yet he still managed to stay ahead of Aaron Burr. It had to end, one way or the other. 

On that New Jersey hillside, Burr thought they were finally on level ground, pistols drawn. He looked Alexander Hamilton directly in the eye for the first time in what felt like years. He was wearing his glasses, his gaze inscrutable. Mixed with his anger and righteous determination, Burr felt the familiar pull, drawing them together. He was definitely insane. 

Hamilton looked calm, checking over his gun. Burr was going crazy. Angry, terrified, more out of control than he had ever been in his life. There was no way in hell he’d be able to shoot straight. Not that he’d get the chance. Hamilton had first shot. One step ahead. Until the end.

Hamilton shot on the count of ten.

Burr felt death coming on the morning wind. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t feel his hands. He had no final thought.

He fired his gun.

For the first time in his life, he saw the connection between them. It was real and tangible. He hadn’t been crazy. It sped through the air and hit Hamilton between the ribs.

And then it was gone.

He didn’t die until the next day, but the connection broke on that hillside. It was there and then gone. Severed in a plume of gunpowder and a scream. 

In those fevered months leading up to the duel, Burr had thought that maybe, just maybe, he could even the score. Get a shot in, slow Hamilton down enough so he could catch up. He thought he had wanted to kill him. He was wrong.

Hamilton was gone, and Burr had never caught up, never understood.

That connection, the one that had haunted him since they were teenagers, had disappeared. He had made it real and severed it all in one fell shot. Burr had cut himself adrift.

Everyone he loved died.

Afterwards, he told himself that he had won the duel. He had stopped Hamilton in his tracks forever. He, Aaron Burr, had survived. This was his chance to surpass Hamilton once and for all.

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t move on. He should have known not to try. He was the middle ground. Hamilton was the stars, the poetry.

Hamilton was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we end on Eliza once more because she is the best.


	6. Eliza II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we come to the end. Thank you for riding the wave of angst with me, and enjoy Eliza's extra chapter.

Eliza was old. She could feel it in her body, of course, in creaking joints and aching muscles, but mostly, she felt it in her heart. So much time had passed, so much had changed, for better and for worse. She had watched for years as the people she knew died, one by one. Even the children she had raised at the orphanage began to grow old, those who made it that far. Not all of them did.

She thought of Alexander. She thought of him often, tried to imagine what it would have been like to grow old with him, how his face might have wrinkled, whether that brilliant pen hand of his would have shaken and cramped as her own hands did. She could never quite see it. In her mind, Alexander was forever young, forever vibrant. After Phillip died, he had lost much of his laughter, but never his intensity.

Angelica was right. She had married an Icarus, and he had burned as brightly as the sun. 

She should have regretted it, probably. Or she should have moved on, at the very least. But Eliza could not. She had lived longer now without Alexander than she ever had with him, but her memories with him shone brighter than all rest. The merest whisper of his remembered smile eclipsed the heartbreak and the decades of loneliness. Perhaps it made her weak, but she could not help how she felt. Being loved and burnt by Alexander was by far better than never having felt his warmth at all.

Her daughter, Elizabeth, entered the room at that moment, carrying a cup of tea and a loving smile. Eliza remembered Alexander’s excitement when they had a second daughter, how he had begged to have her named after her mother. The best of wives and best of women. Those words had hurt so much for so long. They weren’t true. If she had been better, perhaps she could have caught up to him, held on. Kept him alive.

“What are you thinking of, Mother?” Beth asked, sitting down across from her with her own cup of tea. She was a good woman. She had Alexander’s smile.

“Oh, just my Hamilton.” Beth’s smile turned a little sad. 

“What about him?” Beth had only been five when Alexander had died, but she had always listened attentively to the stories of her mother and her older siblings. Eliza feared sometimes that she bored her daughter with these endless reminisces. She remembered being young and wondering why the elderly were so stuck in the past. She had sworn she would not be like them, and she had done her best to live in the present world and make it better. But there was her Alexander, decades away and she could never quite leave him.

“People seem to marvel at how long I’ve outlived him by.” She said at last. Beth looked puzzled.

“Well, yes. You’re an extraordinary woman, Mother.”

Eliza shook her head, smiling at her daughter. “Thank you. You flatter me. But you see, I don’t really think I outlived him at all.”

“No?” And now she looked truly confused.

“No. I think he out-died me.” Beth half-laughed at that, but Eliza wasn’t finished. “You didn’t know your father, so you don’t understand what I’m saying. Others did, once, but they’re gone too. You see, my Hamilton had a way of getting ahead of everyone. Of enveloping them in his grand ideas and then sprinting off to do the next great thing. There were so many of us left in his wake. Sometimes I think that on that day, dying just became the next thing he had to do, and he had to be the first.”

Beth still didn’t understand. “But he wasn’t looking for death. Mr. Burr killed him. It was murder.” Eliza had to smile at how Beth still gave the man who shot her father a polite title. She had raised her children well.

“That’s the other thing, Beth. It was always so hard to know what my Hamilton wanted. He wanted so much. And he was always willing to die to get it. I loved that and feared it in him. I feared that one day he would get too far ahead of me and I would lose him forever.”

“And that’s exactly what happened.” There were tears in Beth’s eyes, but Eliza had spent enough time crying.

“No it’s not, my dear. You see me? I’m getting old. I’m catching up. Your father rewrote the game one last time when he died. A game that I can’t help but win eventually. We will meet in Heaven, Elizabeth, and I will hold him again, and it will all have been worth it.”

It was already worth it, but still, she couldn’t wait to see his eyes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Hope you enjoyed it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr at www.ast0ryintheend.tumblr.com


End file.
